Saturday 28th May
Ho hum. We spent the day at the hillclimb. (Sorry - lots of car photos)
Not as bad as all that actually. It was interesting to see how they do it here in France.
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| The hillclimb was near the village of Saint-Goueno which was about an hour from where we are staying. The course is 3.2km long which Rob says is unheard of in Australia. |
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| Another foggy start to the day - but the fog lifted by lunchtime and it turned out to be a beautiful day. I think we are both sun and wind burnt. |
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| Long drop dunnies - as Rob says I guess when the event is over they just lift the boxes and fill in the hole. |
This weekend is a round of the French hillclimb
championship, with an invitation group of what they call ‘masters’ from the UK
(England, Ireland, Guernsey and Jersey). The day started off interesting when I
heard them talking about an Aussie who had bought a car to run the course. So
we tracked him down – Tom Hackett from Coffs and his wife Marguerite. They are
over in England and France for 10 months – bought an RV, and a competition car
with trailer. He did a couple of events in England and hopes to pick up another
couple in France. Good to be the only Aussie competing as he got a bit of air
time on the PA.
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| This is Tom Hackett from Coffs Harbour. With his car and motorhome. The car is road registered so they can use it to get around when they park the motor home in a caravan park. |
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| Car 240 - Tom the Aussie. |
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| The tent on the left is the food and beer/wine tent. |
The other funny thing that happened – Tom introduced us to
an English fellow from Guernsey and it turned out that his surname is LeMaitre
which is the family name (Rob’s Mums side) that we are going to track down in Guernsey.
Going back eons they are probably 3rd or 4th cousins 27
times removed.
Lunch at the event is like events at home – sausages wrapped
in a galette (which is a buckwheat crepe), not my favourite, and fries. The
event stops for 2 hours for lunch – this is the French way, they always have a
long lunch. It is interesting that the competition does not stop drivers and
everyone else from having a wine or beer at lunchtime.
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| Lots of dogs at the event - thankfully most were on leads. |
The spectator point was well set up with PA system (French of
course) and a big screen which showed the cars approaching and leaving the
spectator point. Funniest thing we heard though was if a car got very twitchy
through the hairpin the announcer was heard to say ‘Ooh la la!’.
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| Approaching the hairpin |
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| A car |
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| Another car |
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| And another |
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| And another |
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| And another |
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| And some minis for someone we know |
After a long day out dinner tonight was take away pizza.
As
we had no fixed plan from here we decided to stay on an extra 2 nights and we
leave here on Monday. Tomorrow hopefully will be a shorter day and we might
head to the south. We’d like to pick up a crab tomorrow to try before we leave
Brittany.
That red Mini looks just like my first car!
ReplyDeleteWith the numbers and all?
DeleteWhat a coincidence meeting the driver and his introducing you to a distant relative, very exciting. Why are cars red...because they go faster!!!!
ReplyDeleteThe 'distant relative' didn't seem terribly interested in whether there might be a link. We'll see what we can find out when we got to Guernsey on Wednesday.
DeleteThey weren't another car. They were a different car. The Minis looked good
ReplyDeleteYes - I guess they are a different car, and Rob would hardly call the Chapparal just another car.
Delete